An Evaluation of Social Responsibility Reporting in China

In the past two years, the issuance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has become an important nonprofi t practice of enterprises in China. As of April 2008, over eighty enterprises in China in industries such as biochemical and energy, food and beverage, computers, fi nance and insurance, and automotive had released CSR (or equivalent) reports. Using SustainAbility's indicator system, the paper evaluates CSR reports issued by enterprises in China between May 2007 and April 2008. Th e paper fi nds reports' descriptions of management and performance to be quite good, but that reports failed to give enough information about governance and strategy, data availability, audits, and other aspects. Furthermore, we discovered that the current indicator system, while able to evaluate the quality of reports in form, falls short of truly evaluating their contents. Th us, a new indicator system must be devised to allow an overall assessment of the content of reports.